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Mayhem and murder are more fitting for my mood.
I’m usually a passive person, a go-with-the-flow, all-things-work-out-the-way-they’re-supposed-to kind of girl.
That was all before my life imploded last week.
Sam, my fiancé—ex-fiancé—is the responsible party for all my woes.
He was the consummate swindler, a shark, a con man.
I fell for every trick, believed every word. I loved him in that too-good-to-be-true fashion, where I turned a blind eye to every red flag. He was so quick to explain everything away. He never once faltered.
He was older, more experienced, knew the best way to run a business. He knew all the ways to make money faster. His connections helped me grow my interior design business. I felt like I owed him everything. That feeling was never more real than when he pulled the rug right out from under me, when he not only turned all the people I thought were friends against me, but he also burned every bridge that we builttogether.
He ran up my credit cards and took money meant for client projects. He left me with nothing but a pile of debt and no recourse for filing charges on him because he was given access to every aspect of my life, with no legal obligation.
He told me goodbye with a sad smile on his face, one last effort to gaslight me into thinking that I was to blame for it all.
I pulled the wool from my eyes a few years too late, and my inattention to all things in my life and business have landed me right back in Lindell, Texas, right back in my childhood bedroom, forced to listen to my parents getting busy.
Confronting them does nothing.
“Sex is healthy in a relationship,”my mother told me when I tried to bring it up the last time.
It’s clear they don’t want me here any more than I want to be here, but they should know I don’t exactly have a choice. They used most of their savings to pay off my clients in an effort for me to avoid my own criminal charges. Not only am I broke, but the next hundred years of my life will be spent paying them back.
I don’t have enough money to move out. I probably couldn’t even afford one of the tiny duplexes that Jason Brecken owns across town, despite Lindell being one of the last remaining places that hasn’t seen the same inflation growth that other places have.
After the podcast explains exactly how the woman took revenge on her cheating husband, I risk further damage to my psyche, and pull the pillow away from my head, slowly pulling an earbud from my ear.
The sound of my parents’ shower running gives me the all clear from having to listen to them any further, but it still leaves me with facing them in the kitchen.
In their retirement, their routine can be marked off a list, always in the same order. You could set your watch by it most days. I know in less than ten minutes, they’ll be in the kitchen, making breakfast, something they also do together. Everything together. As much as I try to blame it on thirty-five years of marriage and an unhealthy co-dependency on each other, I know better. My parents have always been so overwhelmingly in love with each other. Growing up, it’s what I wanted. I wanted a man who dotes on me the way Dad does on Mom.
I know there are a few fingers I could point in their direction to blame them for the way I was so easily swindled by Sam. I saw in him so many similarities to my dad. It didn’t take much to convince me that I had found in him exactly what I’d been looking for. The man must’ve seen me coming from a mile away.
My parents never liked Sam, and maybe that should’ve been the one and only red flag I didn’t ignore, but a woman in love will overlook a lot ofthings. Instead of breaking up with Sam, I dug my heels in deeper. If they didn’t like him, then there was no reason I should waste my time trying to get them to. The problem was easily solved by putting distance between myself and them.
I swallow down another threat of tears, my promise to myself that I was done crying over all of it becoming a losing battle.
I take a deep breath, knowing how lucky I am.
I’m healthy. My parents didn’t falter when I called and told them what had happened. They never once have told me they were right all along. They simply drained their savings to keep me from going to jail and offered me a place to stay until I got back on my feet.
I know I sound incredibly ungrateful, complaining about the way I’m woken up nearly every morning. This is their house, after all. I’m just a guest.
I climb out of bed and head to my own shower, taking my time and trying to wash away the ick I still feel for the sounds that won’t seem to release their tendrils from my memory.
Of course, Mom is in a great mood when I enter the kitchen half an hour later.
“Figured you’d be out in the garden already,” I mutter as I make my way to the coffee pot.
“Trying to avoid me again?” Mom asks, humor in her tone.
I grunt in response as I pour the last dregs of caffeine from the pot.
“Did you ever hear from Cash?”
“No, Mother.”
